City Of London

Farage’s Party Turns on the Charm for City of London’s Bankers

Reform is invoking Margaret Thatcher’s Big Bang to woo the UK’s flagship industry

The City of London.Photographer: Henry Nicholls/Getty Images

Business leaders gathered in the heart of the City of London last month to hear a familiar pitch from an unfamiliar quarter.

Reform UK’s deputy leader Richard Tice said his insurgent party would revitalize the financial industry in much the same way that Margaret Thatcher unleashed a deregulatory revolution four decades ago. For years now, successive Conservative and Labour politicians have similarly pledged to rekindle the spirit of the 1980s “Big Bang” reforms that made the UK one of the world’s top financial centres.